Shades of Gray
by Rachel Hawkins
Summary: Tension simmers between Tom and Anya as they look for common ground after a traumatic day. Spoilers for Series One.


**Shades of Gray**

Tom Price had never been a man to shy away from trouble. He sought it out, found it, and reveled in it. And he found it again, behind the house an odd group of strangers had come together in.

Anya hid in the shadows of a deceptively beautiful sunset. Her back was to a tree, knees drawn up and eyes staring into the distance. He was drawn to her in ways he didn't entirely understand or care for, but he couldn't seem to help himself.

He approached her quietly, and though she pretended not to be, he knew she was aware of his presence. Her head started to turn, but she stopped, apparently thought better of it, and resumed her thousand-yard stare. His lips twitched.

He leaned back against a nearby tree and stared at her, rather than the colors blazing furiously on the horizon. Rays of the dying sun glinted in her eyes, cast copper highlights through her thick tangle of hair. He shifted uncomfortably, wondering when he'd become such a bloody romantic. "Are you all right?" he asked gruffly.

"I'm fine," she said without looking at him.

He sat down so he was facing her with his back to the tree. His ribs gave him a slight twinge, and he had a sudden craving to have Anya's hands on him, providing what she might not realize was more than simple comfort.

"You don't have to lie to me, you know," he said. "I kept your secret once, didn't I?"

She finally raised her eyes to his. He couldn't read the emotions swimming in them, and wasn't sure he wanted to. "This is why I didn't want anyone to know I was a doctor," she said. "I knew that once people found out, my life, such as it was, wouldn't be my own anymore. People would come to me with all their problems, make demands, and not stop to think that under the medicine, there's a person."

"Could you really have lived with yourself if you'd left that pregnant woman to die?" he asked.

"That's not the point," she said. "There are so few people left now. Why should I be forced to take on everyone's ills from here on out? I've seen enough death already. I'm entitled to a measure of peace like anyone else."

"We've all seen too much death."

She shook her head impatiently. "There has to be choice. People can't be turned into virtual slaves for the so-called good of humanity. No rebuilding is ever going to work if there isn't cooperation."

"You should consider yourself lucky," Tom said. "You have a valuable skill. You could find yourself very wealthy in the new world."

"I don't care about wealth," she told him. "I care about peace."

"Perhaps you should take what you can get. Peace is a scarce commodity these days."

"Which is why you have to fight all the harder for it. And tell me this," she added. "Do you really want to be conscripted into service like that? Told by the people who have appointed themselves leaders what your future is going to be? Or do you want to make your own way?"

"We're not talking about me," he hedged.

"I think we're talking about all of us," she insisted. "The lives we used to have are gone. Our friends and families, gone. It's up to each of us now to start over. To decide what sort of people we're going to be. What we're going to make of ourselves. And each of us should have a choice."

"And if everyone else decides to go with Samantha? To take the security she claims she can offer?"

"Then so be it."

* * * * *

Anya pushed to her feet and paced away. Too much emotion was crawling under her skin, and she had no outlet for it. She pushed her hands impatiently through her hair and turned back to Tom. He still sat by the tree, legs casually stretched out in front of him. He watched her, in that intense, silent way of his. She pursed her lips and paced away again.

He claimed they were connected, and she was afraid it was true. Afraid that it was more than just the fact she'd found him in the middle of the road and saved his life. How could she be looking for that type of connection when the entire world was chaos? But, she thought, that type of connection might just be exactly what she was talking about, what she was fighting for. Wasn't friendship, companionship, supposed to bring about a measure of peace? Didn't everyone need someone they could count on, someone who would stand with them through whatever difficulties they faced?

But was Tom the type of man she could be friends with? She knew that he had been sleeping with Sarah, and the thought caused an ugly curl of jealousy in her gut that she tried viciously to suppress. She had no right to judge him. Hadn't she told him it didn't matter who they slept with? _That's not exactly what you were talking about_, a voice told her. _You were trying to diffuse his anger, and figure out who you were and what you wanted._ But more than that, more than any romantic or physical entanglements she might imagine, there was a darkness in Tom, a violence seething under the surface. She'd seen it peek out at times, and it frightened her a little.

But didn't it also make her feel safe?

She sat back down, irritated with herself. "They'll come back," she said at length. "Dexter and his men, they'll come back. I can't let anyone else get hurt because of me, but I can't just go with them. Not like that, not to the type of life they're offering."

"You don't have to worry about them," Tom said. "If they try to come after you again, we'll stop them."

"At what cost?" she wondered.

"We'll do whatever it takes," Tom said. "If you don't want to go with them, you're not going with them. They can accept it or face the consequences."

She was silent a moment. "What happened out there, Tom? After we left, what happened?"

He met her eyes. "Do you really want to know?"

"No, I don't suppose I do," she said. "I can imagine well enough. But you risked yourself for me. What if they decide to come after you too? What if they come after you because of what you did for me?"

"I did what I did for all of us," he told her. "Like you said, it's about choice. And I choose not to start my life over at gunpoint. That smug little bastard Dexter can shove it."

Anya couldn't fight the smile that tugged at her lips. "An attitude like that is going to get you in trouble one day."

"Who says it hasn't already?"

The smile slowly faded from her lips, and she turned to watch the last blazing red rays of sunlight fade into twilight gray. "I'm scared, Tom," she murmured. "I'm scared of everything, I think. We can't live like this forever, but neither can we live in cages."

Tom stared hard into the distance. He knew, all too well, what it was like to be caged as an animal. It was not a life he planned to go back to. "For now all we can do is live one day at a time," he said. "There's no past and no future. There's only today."

"Every day we survive is a victory, is that it?"

"Isn't it?"

"You don't strike me as the philosophical type, Tom."

"What type do I strike you as?" he asked.

Her lips tipped up again. "You strike me as the type who grabs life by the bollocks and does whatever he wants."

This brought about a rare smile from Tom, and Anya felt slightly foolish for considering it a small victory. They needed every one they could get, and maybe he was right. Maybe every day they survived intact was a victory. But he was also wrong. "There has to be more," she said. "There has to be some kind of future, something we're working toward, otherwise what's the point?"

"Are you turning fatalistic on me now?"

"It would be easy, wouldn't it?" she asked. "To give up, to stop fighting. But no, I don't want to die. I want to find a way to live, but I want to do it on my own terms."

"Then let that be your goal, if you need one. A life lived how you want it. Not a bad goal, as far as those things go."

"Maybe you're right," she said. "Setting specific goals would be foolish at this point, wouldn't it?" She stood up and stretched her arms over her head, then looked back at the house. The only indication of the life inside was a faint glow from the oil lamp in the kitchen. She took a few steps toward the house but stopped and turned back to Tom.

"Perhaps you didn't do it just for me," she said, "but thank you all the same."

"They had no right to come in here the way they did. They'll learn sooner or later that if they want the cooperation of the people who are left, they've got to go about it a different way. Putting a bullet between Dexter's eyes would be a good start."

Anya glanced away. As a doctor her philosophy has been to help whoever she could and harm none. But she'd seen no humanity in Dexter's eyes. Only desperation, greed and ambition. He'd chosen to make his way behind the barrel of a gun. He was a dangerous man, and had proven numerous times already that he thought nothing of hurting anyone who stood in his way. And now he had earned the backing of the woman who claimed to be all that remained of the government, however reluctant she might claim to be about allying with him.

How could she trust a woman who would give power to that sort of man?

"I don't want to spend the rest of my life being afraid," she said.

Somehow, the distance between them had narrowed. "You won't have to," Tom told her. "One way or another, those people will learn to leave us alone. They won't hurt you again."

Her expression softened, and she reached out and took his hand. She couldn't explain how attraction worked, or what drew one person to another. But she was drawn to Tom in a way that felt both impossible and vital. Finding him on the road that day had forged a bond between them, one that had somehow deepened while neither of them was looking. He had come for her twice now when she'd needed help. This gruff, distant man had put himself in the line of fire for her, whether he claimed another reason or not. And in a world gone to chaos, that meant everything to her.

She stepped close and pressed her lips to his. The touch was light, a soft pressure without expectation. Tom's hands came up to clutch her elbows and pull her against the length of his body. She parted her lips, deepening the kiss as he spun her around so her back was pressed against the tree. She clutched his shoulders, fingernails digging into flesh as arousal speared through her. She wanted this, wanted so much to feel vital, to feel alive. To feel safely cocooned in a world where nothing existed except the stars and the moon and the heat between them.

But she stopped.

"Wait, stop," she whispered, pushing against his shoulders as she pulled her lips away from his.

"Stop?" he questioned. "You want to stop? Are you a lesbian after all, then?"

The sound she made was trapped somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "No," she said. "No, but I won't sleep with you while you're still sleeping with Sarah."

"I'm not sleeping with Sarah," he argued.

She smiled softly, a shaft of emerging moonlight glinting in her eyes. "It's a big house, but it's not that big."

"Any longer. I'm not sleeping with her any longer."

She walked backward a few steps, keeping her eyes on him. "We'll see," she said. "Good night, Tom."

Tom groaned when she disappeared inside the house. He thought about punching the tree trunk in frustration but decided not to bloody his knuckles. His dragged his hands through his hair instead, wondering what it was about that particular woman that was tying him in knots.

He looked up at the house, shook his head when he saw Sarah quickly let the curtain fall back into place. He could go to her and she would welcome him into her bed, even after what he'd done. But the thought held no appeal. If he went to bed with Sarah, she wouldn't be the one he was sleeping with, not in his mind. So he ignored her instead.

He went into the house with a vague thought of following Anya up to her bedroom and trying to change her mind, but left her alone instead. There would be plenty of time to change her mind later. And change it he would.

But that night he went to bed alone, with anger and lust shadowing his dreams, and the peace that Anya wanted so desperately was nowhere to be found.


End file.
